Janet Norwood holds one of the most important and demanding jobs
in the federal government. As the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, she frequently testifies before Congress and its various
committees. She also oversees nearly 3000 government employees who collect and
analyze data on labor, employment, and the economy. "We are responsible for
some of the most sensitive of the economic data," she notes, such as measures
of productivity, inflation, and employment and unemployment. 'These data figure
very prominently in most of the political debates, so it is extremely important
that they be accurate and of high quality, and that they be released in a
manner that is totally objective." Janet is Past-President of the American
Statistical Association, a position that testifies to her important
contributions to the field of statistics. "I like my job, I find it quite
fascinating, very challenging, and very difficult at times," Janet says. "And I
like it because I'm very proud of the staff we have here. We have a very
dedicated staff... We do a great deal of work that I think is important."

Mathematician Nancy Kopell has spent the last several years
working on a mathematical framework for problems in biology. In 1990, she
received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, a generous five-year grant
allowing her to expand and build on her research. Nancy works on central
pattern generators---neural networks that govern rhythmic motor processes, such
as swimming, walking, chewing, and breathing. "The overall problem we're trying
to approach is to get a better understanding of the relationship between
structure and function in the central nervous system," she explains. When she
first became interested in this subject, the problems had not even been framed
in mathematical language. The biologists were surprised to find that
mathematics could provide relatively simple answers to some of their questions.
"The culture of biology stresses detail, differences among species and among
individuals within the species," she notes. "Mathematics starts from exactly
the opposite point of view. The power of mathematics is the ability to find
generalizations that span different individuals, and the challenge is to do so
in ways that preserve the importance of the relevant details."

Lenore Blum is a research scientist at the International
Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California and also holds academic
posts at Mills College in Oakland and at the University of California at
Berkeley. Lenore was instrumental in the founding of the Association for Women
in Mathematics, serving as its President from 1975 to 1978. Currently, she does
research in complexity theory, which examines fundamental questions about what
kinds of problems can and cannot be solved by computers. "Certain problems have
built-in obstructions to easy solution," Lenore explains, "so it's been
important to categorize which are the hard problems and which are the easy
problems." She and her colleagues have been developing a new branch of
complexity theory that will apply to computational problems arising in science
and engineering. "What we've been doing is laying down the foundations [for the
new theory], and that's been really exciting." In recent years, Lenore's work
has gained prominence, and she has traveled all over the U.S., as well as to
Europe, the Soviet Union, South America, and Japan, to speak about her
research.